Amy Goodman, host of the self-described progressive radio show Democracy Now!, is a revered investigative journalist and a media celebrity. Her program, hosted along with Juan Gonzalez, airs on more than 450 public, community, college, public access and satellite radio and television stations. Left-leaning individuals hailing from all walks of life, from Ivy League professors to pot-growing hippies, love her work. And for it she has garnered numerous awards and an impressive cast of intelligentsia friends (what up, Noam Chomsky?). Moreover, Goodman is regarded by many as heroic for her ongoing efforts to go "where the silence is."

1) State Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez got into a minor scuffle last week with the governor's task force on ethics. He isn't wild about holding a special session to consider ethics bills, as the task force suggested. Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino and Alibi columnist says the package doesn't address one huge ethical problem in the state, which is:

DATELINE: CHINA—A Chinese couple searching for a distinctive name for their child have proposed naming the kid after the international e-mail symbol for “at.” The unidentified couple were cited last Thursday by a government official as an example of citizens bringing bizarre names into the Chinese language. All Chinese birth names must be approved by the country’s government. According to Chinese law, children are only allowed to take the surname of either their father or their mother. As of last year, only 129 names accounted for 87 percent of all surnames in China, noted Li Yuming, vice director of the State Language Commission. According to the father of @ (last name unknown), the letters “a” and “t” can be pronounced in a way that sounds like the phrase “love him” in Chinese.

OPM Nightclub and Ultralounge! You may already know that the self-proclaimed "VIP" dance club is actually one half of dual-city enterprise—there's one in Las Vegas, Nev., (Caesar's Palace) and one in downtown Albuquerque (two blocks from the railroad tracks). What you didn't know is that one was voted the No. 1 "Upscale Hip-Hop Nightclub in the World," supposedly by more than one milllion voters in the Yahoo Readers’ Poll. The other is closing after this weekend. Bet you can't guess which is which!

When it's this hot, my weekends blur into a strict underwear-only dress code, accented tastefully with a cold can lodged against my neck. I resolve to hunker down in my apartment until the sun sets. I am like a vampire ... without the yen for blood, of course. When it's this hot, there are few things powerful enough to dislodge me from the direct path of my swamp cooler and make me put "real" clothes on, and one of them is ice cream. Beer is another. Smoothies are in there somewhere, too.